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A short list of Trump’s potential Supreme Court nominees

Brett Kavanaugh of Maryland, 53, U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit
Pluses: Like Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch, named to the high court by Trump last year, he is out of conservative central casting. A Yale Law graduate to Gorsuch's Harvard, they served together as law clerks to retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy. Whip-smart and popular with the Federalist Society set, he has a long record of opinions and dissents that leaves little for Trump or Senate Republicans to worry about.
Minuses: That long record will give opponents much to work with. His mild dissent in a case upholding the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate left room for conservatives as well as liberals to disagree. His contention that presidents should be free from lawsuits and investigations likely pleases Trump but will confound Democrats. His work in the George W. Bush administration also could come back to haunt him. U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit photo

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Brett Kavanaugh of Maryland, 53, U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit
Pluses: Like Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch, named to the high court by Trump last year, he is out of conservative central casting. A Yale Law graduate to Gorsuch's Harvard, they served together as law clerks to retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy. Whip-smart and popular with the Federalist Society set, he has a long record of opinions and dissents that leaves little for Trump or Senate Republicans to worry about.
Minuses: That long record will give opponents much to work with. His mild dissent in a case upholding the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate left room for conservatives as well as liberals to disagree. His contention that presidents should be free from lawsuits and investigations likely pleases Trump but will confound Democrats. His work in the George W. Bush administration also could come back to haunt him.
U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit photo

Amy Coney Barrett of Indiana, 46, U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit
Pluses: She rocketed to the top of Trump's list with a stellar performance during her confirmation last fall, when Democrats cited her deep Catholic faith as a potential problem. The mother of seven children, including two from Haiti and one with special needs, she offers the imagery Trump craves. Being a woman may box in Democrats. Being from Indiana may box in moderate Democratic Sen. Joe Donnelly, who faces a tough re-election campaign. Being the youngest on Trump's list buys more years on the court. And degrees from Notre Dame, where she taught for two decades, can't hurt.
Minuses: She has served as a judge for just eight months, which gives her the least experience of any of the potential nominees. She has written that Supreme Court precedents are not sacrosanct, which liberals have interpreted as a threat to the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion nationwide. 2017 photo provided by the University of Notre Dame Law School in South Bend, Ind. via AP

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Amy Coney Barrett of Indiana, 46, U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit
Pluses: She rocketed to the top of Trump's list with a stellar performance during her confirmation last fall, when Democrats cited her deep Catholic faith as a potential problem. The mother of seven children, including two from Haiti and one with special needs, she offers the imagery Trump craves. Being a woman may box in Democrats. Being from Indiana may box in moderate Democratic Sen. Joe Donnelly, who faces a tough re-election campaign. Being the youngest on Trump's list buys more years on the court. And degrees from Notre Dame, where she taught for two decades, can't hurt.
Minuses: She has served as a judge for just eight months, which gives her the least experience of any of the potential nominees. She has written that Supreme Court precedents are not sacrosanct, which liberals have interpreted as a threat to the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion nationwide.
2017 photo provided by the University of Notre Dame Law School in South Bend, Ind. via AP

Brett Kavanaugh is sworn in as a US Court of Appeals Judge for the District of Columbia by US Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy as Kavanaugh's wife Ashley holds the Bible during ceremonies June 1, 2006 in Washington, DC.
PAUL J. RICHARDS, AFP/Getty Images

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Brett Kavanaugh is sworn in as a US Court of Appeals Judge for the District of Columbia by US Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy as Kavanaugh's wife Ashley holds the Bible during ceremonies June 1, 2006 in Washington, DC.
PAUL J. RICHARDS, AFP/Getty Images

Amy Coney Barrett of Indiana, 46, U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit during the University of Notre Dame's Law School commencement ceremony May 19, 2018. ROBERT FRANKLIN, South Bend Tribune via AP

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Amy Coney Barrett of Indiana, 46, U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit during the University of Notre Dame's Law School commencement ceremony May 19, 2018.
ROBERT FRANKLIN, South Bend Tribune via AP

Thomas Hardiman of Pennsylvania, 52, U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit.
Pluses: He was the runner-up to Gorsuch in 2017, giving him instant credibility. He's a law-and-order conservative in the mold of Associate Justice Samuel Alito, who came from the same appeals court. Maryanne Trump Barry, the president's sister, served with him until her retirement. He drove a taxi to get through law school, and his degrees from Notre Dame and Georgetown give him a non-Ivy League appeal.
Minuses: His star appears to be fading. A limited paper trail on the appeals court worries some conservatives. He is not known as a great legal theorist like Kavanaugh, nor is he a "feeder judge" whose law clerks are snapped up by Supreme Court justices. While Kavanaugh has sent 41 clerks there, Hardiman has sent none.
MATT SLOCUM, AP

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Thomas Hardiman of Pennsylvania, 52, U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit.
Pluses: He was the runner-up to Gorsuch in 2017, giving him instant credibility. He's a law-and-order conservative in the mold of Associate Justice Samuel Alito, who came from the same appeals court. Maryanne Trump Barry, the president's sister, served with him until her retirement. He drove a taxi to get through law school, and his degrees from Notre Dame and Georgetown give him a non-Ivy League appeal.
Minuses: His star appears to be fading. A limited paper trail on the appeals court worries some conservatives. He is not known as a great legal theorist like Kavanaugh, nor is he a "feeder judge" whose law clerks are snapped up by Supreme Court justices. While Kavanaugh has sent 41 clerks there, Hardiman has sent none.
MATT SLOCUM, AP

Raymond Kethledge of Michigan, 51, U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit
Pluses: His strong adherence to textualism and originalism, the twin tenets that drove the late Justice Antonin Scalia, pleases conservatives. A finalist for the job last year, he emerged with Kavanaugh as a leading contender for the next opening. Like Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, he is a former Kennedy law clerk. He's known for his attention to detail in writing, which he often does from a remote, Internet-free cabin.
Minuses: Despite a decade on the appeals court, his record is thin in several areas of the law, which worries some conservatives. Though major cases on Obamacare and same-sex marriage came through his circuit, he did not serve on the panels considering them. His 2016 ruling that cellphone users do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their location records was overturned at the Supreme Court this term. C-SPAN via AP, May 7, 2008

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Raymond Kethledge of Michigan, 51, U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit
Pluses: His strong adherence to textualism and originalism, the twin tenets that drove the late Justice Antonin Scalia, pleases conservatives. A finalist for the job last year, he emerged with Kavanaugh as a leading contender for the next opening. Like Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, he is a former Kennedy law clerk. He's known for his attention to detail in writing, which he often does from a remote, Internet-free cabin.
Minuses: Despite a decade on the appeals court, his record is thin in several areas of the law, which worries some conservatives. Though major cases on Obamacare and same-sex marriage came through his circuit, he did not serve on the panels considering them. His 2016 ruling that cellphone users do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their location records was overturned at the Supreme Court this term.
C-SPAN via AP, May 7, 2008

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Brett Kavanaugh of Maryland, 53, U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit
Pluses: Like Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch, named to the high court by Trump last year, he is out of conservative central casting. A Yale Law graduate to Gorsuch's Harvard, they served together as law clerks to retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy. Whip-smart and popular with the Federalist Society set, he has a long record of opinions and dissents that leaves little for Trump or Senate Republicans to worry about.
Minuses: That long record will give opponents much to work with. His mild dissent in a case upholding the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate left room for conservatives as well as liberals to disagree. His contention that presidents should be free from lawsuits and investigations likely pleases Trump but will confound Democrats. His work in the George W. Bush administration also could come back to haunt him.